So: This isn't exactly 'happy', but I think it's an important paradigm shift.
I own nothing.
This is dedicated to the amazing Greenwool (in fact, don't read any further unless you've stopped by her page and seen what real writing is like) who not only inspired this work, but was kind enough to beta as well.
Finally, he asked Dr Aurelius for swimming lessons.
After Katniss was sent back to District Twelve without him (under what he was surewould be the stellar guidance of Haymitch) he decided he was tired of his personal limitations keeping them apart. So he spent hours undergoing psychotherapy and sifting through memories; trying to separate shiny, from painful, from real. Dr Aurelius told him he needed to learn to control his body's response to fear so that it wouldn't trigger episodes, but Peeta decided it would be faster to just fear nothing at all. He demanded endless horrific simulations to desensitize his nervous system, until the nightmares became so terrible the good doctor put a stop to it. He told Peeta there was not going to be a 'fast' way to undo the damage of prolonged torture and if he ever wanted to be fit enough to see Katniss again he needed to take it one day at a time.
He spent four days kicking and screaming in his padded cell.
Next, he tried working out and sparing daily. There was a part of his brain that was constantly preparing for another arena. When President Coin suggested a final Hungers Games, he didn't believe they would ever truly be finished. He didn't trust anyone anymore, and when Katniss said she agreed to another round of the Games, he felt like everything he had ever known about her, about anyone, was a lie. Then when she shot Coin, he remembered Haymitch saying he 'stood with the Mockingjay'. They were doing it again: having secret conversations that he was excluded from because he was too weak, stupid or crazy to understand.
Well fine. Maybe he didn't understand.
So he set out to learn their language. He read book after book on military strategy, played chess every night with whoever was available, and read manuscripts written by generals over the last fifty years on the philosophies of population control and how to start and stop wars. He trained relentlessly, turning his wrestling knowledge into ultimate defense. He imagined himself as a sentinel trained to see every possible enemy and defend against it. He wrestled simulation attackers until shadows had him jumping into fighting stances. After he became so paranoid that he holed himself up in his room and refused to let anyone within a ten-foot radius, Dr Aurelius calmly dropped a silver parachute of devastation on him.
What did Katniss want from him?
Almost nonchalantly, he pointed out that despite Peeta's obvious lack of military knowledge or skill, Katniss had willingly chosen him as her partner and ally in not one, but two arenas. It seemed, before he started trying to kill her at least, she always chose him- was the only person, in fact, who chose him even when she had stronger, more skilled companions around her. Even in the Battle for the Captiol, she could have left him but didn't. So was it really necessary for him to become this better, stronger person for her? Was that what she wanted?
The doctor suggested that since the path to becoming said warrior was clearly causing him severe physical and mental distress, he should be very sure it was going to take him to the destination he wanted.
And since Katniss wasn't there to tell them what she wanted, had Peeta ever thought about what he wanted? For himself?
It was like the time Prim had dosed him with morphling while he watched images of Katniss flicker across a screen. For days, he sat in silence.
Realization began to separate in his mind like sediment settling in a glass someone had finally stopped shaking. Haymitch and Katniss may have had some kind of connection that he never would. Hell, Gale probably would fit right in with them. But one thing was for sure, it seemed everyone was only interested in seeing what Katniss could do. No one, not Haymitch, not Gale, not Coin and certainly not Katniss herself ever stopped to think about what she should do. Like, was it wise to ask a seventeen year old to be on the battlefield, leading a rebellion when she could barely feed herself? Or whether her shooting someone while she was falling apart after Prim's death, suffering from third degree burns and hopped up on pain pills was a good idea. And now she was with only Haymitch? His idea of fine literally only required her to be breathing.
But since he couldn't be with her right then, he was going to make damn sure when he got back, nothing was ever going to keep him from her again.
Unless she wanted it of course. Always a distinct possibility.
But somehow that didn't seem terrible. As long as he could be there if she wanted him.
So when he stopped training, stopped pushing himself to the extreme limits of his physical and mental endurance, and decided to ask for help, it was in the form of swimming lessons. If he was ever stuck out in the ocean again he would not wait for someone to bring him to her.
He was at the point where he could feel the episodes coming on and tried to ride them out with deep breathing or breaking furniture, when Dr Aurelius brought up the idea of mourning. Peeta had repeatedly watched people die, either by his hands or someone else's, and apparently grieving was a part of the 'healing process'. The doctor understood that the death of his family might have been hard, but he suspected the murders might actually have been more traumatic.
So Peeta was supposed to grieve.
They tried therapies involving letting go and forgiveness but Peeta became so enraged that the exercises ended quickly.
"That's the PROBLEM! We keep telling ourselves it's ok and we had no choice and then seventy-five years later we're sending twelve year olds to the slaughter! IT IS NOT FUCKING ALRIGHT!"
After that they stopped discussing forgiveness but stuck with mourning and saying good-bye. For weeks Peeta drew green eyes over and over again before they realized the eyes belonged to the girl from Eight. Finally he was able to draw her face, eyes wide and terrified, blood seeping from the wound in her neck, hair matted to her forehead. Once he was satisfied with the image, Dr Aurelius got permission for them to travel to Eight, and, guarded by soldiers with guns and nurses with syringes, the two of them burnt the drawings of her and then released the ashes over a sea of golden wheat. Then Peeta's knees buckled and he screamed so loud, birds took to the air.
He didn't speak for a week, but that was mostly because he lost his voice. He slept for days.
They did this over and over. For Cato, the Morphling, Brutus, Mitchell.
That's how he ended up on the beach in Four again, sitting on the sand, staring at the sea with a box of Finnick's paper ashes by his side.
No one knew he was here. Whenever he did these 'farewell trips', they blocked off the area under the pretense of military exercises. So he sat alone, save for his usual entourage of soldiers and nurses. The beach was very different now. The clean up effort in Four focused on the inner city and the port areas, so recreational beaches like one they were on, were still littered with abandoned tanks and artillery shells that clung to the shore like rusty skeletons crawling out of the sea. The effect was disturbing, but not enough to ruin that wild beauty the ocean invoked.
The waves were not as high as they were during the Victory Tour, but they were nothing like the eerie stillness of the Quarter Quell either. The birds (seagulls, he has learned) were everywhere and continued to shriek relentlessly. He couldn't decide if they were laughing or sobbing at him.
Finnick was special to him in a way he was never been able to explain to anyone. 'He didn't make me feel crazy,' he told Dr Aurelius, but that felt inadequate. Finnick had loved Annie despite her 'mental fragility', and when Peeta had swung between protective and overbearing to raging lunatic, Finnick's response was to smile sincerely and pat him on the back, even if he had Peeta in an arm bar. There was something in that smile that grounded him. Everyone else was waiting for him to 'get better'. But Finnick just seemed happy he was alive. He didn't care if Peeta was crazy.
Finnick had died smiling so he could live.
He had been through this over and over, tried to understand it, to reconcile it in his mind. That he should live instead of the man with a wife and a baby. He could feel despair rising in him like the tide. He looked at the box, at the ashes he was supposed to release, but he couldn't, not yet. Instead he walked into the ocean deeper and deeper, until he could no longer keep his head above the water. And then he swam forward; eyes and mouth shut tight, fighting the current that wanted to bring him back to the shore. It was cold, but only briefly. Then he was overwhelmed by sea and salt and silence. When he broke the surface for air, the gulls and the waves astounded him, but then he was down again, making neat strokes forwards, surrounded by blackness with nothing but the strain of his muscles and the burn in his lungs reminding him that he was still alive.
He was alone- at the complete mercy of a beast that was indifferent to his survival.
When he began to tire he let himself surface and look around, only to see water on every side. Behind him the beach lay winking in the sun, Dr Aurelius and company standing like stick figures in the sand. Otherwise there was only salt water all around. He realized if he cried here, no one would see or hear him and his tears and sweat wouldn't mean anything to the ocean.
He felt empty and meaningless.
Thank God.